Shuichiro Ogawa
日本語

Notes · updated 2026-07-19

Where Does Creativity Reside?

Faced with creative work, we are tempted to locate the reason in the talent of the individual who accomplished it. A fine idea, one might summarize, came from a fine mind. Yet place the same person in a room with no tools, no materials, and no one to talk to, and the same idea may not appear.

Taking this unease as a starting point, the cognitive science, ecological psychology, learning research, and sociology of the latter twentieth century built up a way of seeing that does not confine cognition and creativity to the inside of the individual. Perception picks up the possibilities for action that the environment offers, thought seeps into body, tools, and others, and learning happens as participation in a community. This note traces the published literature that supports this view, dating each strand, in order to draw a map for rereading creativity as a state produced by interaction with the environment.

Five threads are covered. A view of perception in which the environment offers action (affordances), the claim that cognition extends beyond the head (4E cognition), a view that embeds learning in situations and communities (situated learning), an analysis that distributes cognition across systems of people and tools (distributed cognition), and a critical view of attributing ability to the individual. Where design practice intersects with these is picked up along the way.

The Environment Offers Action: Affordances and Design

In The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979), James J. Gibson recast perception not as information processing inside the head but as a relation between animal and environment1. Objects in the environment offer possibilities for action to the animal that perceives them. Gibson called this possibility an affordance. A handle offers “grasping”; a flat, stable surface offers “standing on it.” An affordance is neither the physical property of the object alone nor a meaning the observer constructs in the head; it exists in the relation between animal and environment.

It was Donald A. Norman who translated this relational view of perception into the vocabulary of design. In The Design of Everyday Things (1988, originally titled The Psychology of Everyday Things), Norman explained the usability of everyday objects through the concept of affordance2. Whether a door should be pushed or pulled, whether a knob should be turned or pressed, is settled by what the shape of the object offers its user. A hard-to-use tool is one where the action the object offers and the action the designer intended have come apart.

Norman’s adaptation does not carry over Gibson’s original sense exactly. Gibson’s affordance exists in the environment whether or not it is perceived, whereas what Norman raised in design theory was the perceivable cue for the user (an aspect Norman himself later distinguished as the signifier). This difference aside, what the two share is a view that places the possibility for action not in individual ability but in the relation between person and environment. Design can be seen as the work of composing an environment that offers desirable action.

Cognition Extends Beyond the Head: 4E Cognition

The view of perception as relation reached cognition in general as well. From the 1990s onward, positions emerged that did not confine cognition to symbol processing in the brain but grasped it in four aspects: embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended, collectively named 4E cognition after the initials.

One of the foundations is The Embodied Mind (1991) by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch3. The three rejected explaining cognition as an internal representation of a pre-given world, and grasped it instead as a process in which the cognizing subject and the cognized world arise together. Perception does not copy the world; an embodied subject enacts the world in the course of interaction with the environment. This position formulated cognition as inseparable from body and action.

The aspect of extension was formulated most sharply in Andy Clark and David Chalmers’s paper “The Extended Mind” (1998)4. The two set side by side a person who writes an address in a notebook and consults it, and a person who recalls the same information from memory, and argued that there is no principled difference between them. If an external tool functions as part of the cognitive process, then the boundary of the mind does not stop at skull or skin. This claim, known as the extended mind thesis, widened the bearer of cognition from the individual brain to the coupling of person and tool.

Alva Noë pushed the enactive aspect further in Action in Perception (2004)5. For Noë, perception is not passive reception but is supported by practical knowledge of the relation between sensation and movement (sensorimotor knowledge), knowledge the perceiver gains by moving the body. To see something is to engage with the world while tacitly knowing how its appearance would change if one changed one’s vantage. Perception is not completed inside the head; it holds across bodily movement and the structure of the environment.

The four aspects are not restatements of one claim. Embodiment points to cognition’s dependence on the structure of the body, embeddedness to its reliance on the resources of the environment, enaction to its bringing forth of a world through action, and extension to the cognitive process itself reaching outward. What they share is a loosening of the premise that cognition is computation closed within the individual brain, and a counting of body, environment, and action among the constituents of cognition.

Learning Is Embedded in Situations: Situated Learning and Legitimate Peripheral Participation

The view that places cognition in relation to the environment also changed the understanding of learning. In Situated Learning (1991), Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger recast learning not as the transfer of knowledge into the individual head but as a deepening of participation in a community6. Newcomers join a practice from a peripheral yet legitimate role, and, working alongside the skilled, gradually move toward the central practices of the community. The two called this process legitimate peripheral participation.

On this view, learning cannot be separated from its situation. A tailor’s apprentice learns to sew not by being taught abstracted techniques but by being placed in a setting surrounded by the tools of the workshop, the materials, the hands of seniors, and exchanges with those who place orders. Knowledge is not an inner good owned by the individual; it is embedded in the practice of the community and shared through participation. Against the view that treats creativity as an individual trait, situated learning shows that the very acquisition of ability depends on environment and relation.

Cognition Distributes Across Systems of People and Tools: Distributed Cognition

In Cognition in the Wild (1995), Edwin Hutchins widened the unit of cognition from the individual to a larger system7. Observing naval navigation over an extended period, Hutchins showed that determining a ship’s position is carried out not in the head of a single navigator but by the whole system of multiple crew members, charts, compasses, logging sheets, and standardized procedures. No individual carries the whole computation alone; cognition is distributed among people and artifacts.

Distributed cognition stands near the extended mind thesis while placing its weight differently. Where Clark and Chalmers argued the coupling of individual and tool, Hutchins set as his unit of analysis a social and technical system in which multiple humans and many artifacts coordinate. Seen as the product of a system, a creative result attributed to a single person becomes a summary that has crammed the system’s computation into the individual.

Design practice can be read as the work of weaving this distributed system of cognition. Sketches, models, sticky notes, and drawings put thought outside the head, make it operable, and let it be shared among several designers. In “Co-creation and the new landscapes of design” (2008), Elizabeth Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers traced how design practice has widened from design by experts to co-creation among diverse people including users8. The view that restricts the bearer of design to the individual expert narrows as the base of participation widens.

Scaffolds That Support Development: ZPD and Scaffolding

The view that ability depends on environment and relation appeared earlier in educational psychology, in a different vocabulary. In Mind in Society (English translation 1978; the underlying essays date from the 1930s), Lev Vygotsky argued that between what a child can do alone and what it can do with the help of an adult or a more capable peer there is a span, and he called this span the zone of proximal development (ZPD)9. Development is not completed inside the individual; it is anticipated in interaction with others and only later settles as individual ability.

The structure of this interaction was described concretely in the paper “The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving” (1976) by David Wood, Jerome Bruner, and Gail Ross10. Observing how an adult supports a young child’s problem solving, the three named the structure by which the supporter takes over the difficult parts of the task, leaves the parts the child can do, and gradually withdraws support scaffolding. Like the temporary structure in building, the scaffold is removed once the object stands on its own. Read together, scaffolding and the ZPD present ability not as a fixed quantity an individual exercises alone, but as an environment-dependent state that appears when a supporting structure is in place and remains in the individual once the structure is withdrawn.

Vygotsky’s discussion is placed before Wood and colleagues’ 1976 formulation only in apparent order, because of the publication year of the English translation (1978). Vygotsky’s original essays were written in the 1930s, and the concept of scaffolding is an experimental, observational adaptation of that view of development.

A Critical View of Attributing Ability to the Individual

The literature so far has shown that cognition and learning depend on environment. If so, an explanation that attributes a result to individual ability alone is open to suspicion of a systematic bias. Social psychology and sociology have pointed to this bias by another route.

In “The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings” (1977), Lee Ross argued that when people explain others’ behavior they tend to underweight the force of the situation and overweight the actor’s inner disposition, formulating what later came to be called the fundamental attribution error11. Faced with the same conduct, the observer readily mistakes whether it was forced by the situation or issued from the person’s disposition. The judgment that attributes a creative result to individual talent is not necessarily free of this attributional bias.

In “The Matthew Effect in Science” (1968), Robert K. Merton described a structure in which the rewards and recognition of science gather disproportionately toward those already eminent12. An already recognized researcher earns more credit than an unknown one for a contribution of equal worth. This cumulative bias between result and recognition cannot be explained by differences in ability alone; the initial distribution of position and opportunity shapes later results.

In Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (English translation 1977; original 1970), Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron analyzed the mechanism by which education, posing as a neutral selection of ability, in fact reproduces the existing class structure13. The cultural capital inherited at home overlaps with the ability the school evaluates, and the “ability” measured there is not an individual endowment independent of environment but bears the imprint of the environment in which one was raised.

In The Tyranny of Merit (2020), Michael Sandel took up this line of points as a contemporary critique of meritocracy14. Meritocracy, which treats success as the deserved reward of individual effort and talent, burdens the successful with hubris and the rest with humiliation. By rendering invisible the role that luck and environment play in outcomes, meritocracy erodes social solidarity. Sandel’s argument shows that the view attributing ability to the individual has consequences that are not merely epistemic but ethical and political.

Rereading Creativity Through Its Relation to Environment

Return to the opening question. In a room with no tools, no materials, and no one to talk to, the same idea may not appear. The reason is not that “talent cannot be exercised without an environment.” It is that perception picks up the possibilities the environment offers, cognition spreads into body and tools, learning happens as participation in a community, and ability appears together with a structure of support.

Read against this literature, the view that treats creativity as an inner individual trait becomes a summary that has crammed the system’s work into the individual. Affordances, 4E cognition, situated learning, distributed cognition, and the critique of meritocracy each illuminate the same single point from a different field. Creative work is not something a talented individual accomplishes by using an environment; it is a state that arises within the relation among person, environment, and others.

This rereading bears on the design of the practices that measure, cultivate, and support creativity. The weight shifts from a mindset of selecting talent to one of arranging an environment that offers possibilities and a structure of participation. What remains is the question of how, having granted the dependence on environment, one still situates the individual’s contribution. That line cannot be drawn by any one of the works listed here alone.

References

  • Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1977). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (R. Nice, Trans.). Sage. (Original: La Reproduction: Éléments pour une théorie du système d’enseignement, Éditions de Minuit, 1970.)
  • Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The Extended Mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8284.00096
  • Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin.
  • Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press.
  • Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815355
  • Merton, R. K. (1968). The Matthew Effect in Science. Science, 159(3810), 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.159.3810.56
  • Noë, A. (2004). Action in Perception. MIT Press.
  • Norman, D. A. (1988). The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books. (First published as The Psychology of Everyday Things.)
  • Ross, L. (1977). The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173–220). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60357-3
  • Sandel, M. J. (2020). The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  • Sanders, E. B.-N., & Stappers, P. J. (2008). Co-creation and the new landscapes of design. CoDesign, 4(1), 5–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710880701875068
  • Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. MIT Press.
  • Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.). Harvard University Press.
  • Wood, D., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(2), 89–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1976.tb00381.x

Footnotes

  1. Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin. ↩

  2. Norman, D. A. (1988). The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books. (First published as The Psychology of Everyday Things.) ↩

  3. Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. MIT Press. ↩

  4. Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The Extended Mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19. ↩

  5. Noë, A. (2004). Action in Perception. MIT Press. ↩

  6. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815355 ↩

  7. Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press. ↩

  8. Sanders, E. B.-N., & Stappers, P. J. (2008). Co-creation and the new landscapes of design. CoDesign, 4(1), 5–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710880701875068 ↩

  9. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.). Harvard University Press. ↩

  10. Wood, D., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(2), 89–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1976.tb00381.x ↩

  11. Ross, L. (1977). The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173–220). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60357-3 ↩

  12. Merton, R. K. (1968). The Matthew Effect in Science. Science, 159(3810), 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.159.3810.56 ↩

  13. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1977). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (R. Nice, Trans.). Sage. (Original: La Reproduction, 1970.) ↩

  14. Sandel, M. J. (2020). The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ↩

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